Rise of the Right

I am not a historian. As a layman, here are my views on the worldwide rise of the right presented for comments by those who have a better perspective of history:

Humans have a need and tendency to organise themselves into larger and larger groups. These have to be hierarchical as is evident from the very fact that the word anarchy has come to mean the opposite of organisation.  Hierarchy implies graduated disparity of power which becomes immense between the top and the bottom.  Also power essentially means the capacity to do harm or good.  This is because the highest coercive powers as well as the treasury belong to the topmost level.

Thus for continued existence of the group and to alleviate suffering that such concentration of coercive powers may bring about in people at the top, a group needs checks and balances.  This may be done by a spiritual guru or a council of ministers.  These may have gradually weakened over time and ceased to be effective. Their breakdown led to revolutions that replaced monarchies with democracies in which people themselves could directly exercise a measure of control over the rulers in the top echelon.

Then came along the Indutrial Revolution. It once again disturbed the rather unstable equilibrium that had been attained.  Mass production of goods at affordable prices brought about unprecedented wealth.  But most of it was concentrated in the hands of owners of factories with only minimal amounts trickling down to the large workforce.  This unprecedented accumulated wealth in the hands of a few has given them the power to manipulate the masses and the democratic process itself.  This is done in collusion with callous politicians and / or religious heads who never before had the support of such power ever before simply because such wealth never earlier existed in the history of mankind. And it has become possible for them to abuse this power because unfortunately the collective wisdom of humans has not grown proportionately to be able to withstand the temptations and threats posed to them through this money power.

And this seems to be the reason behind the tempestuous growth of right wing politics all over the world.